[skrowl]

I clicked on this to see why too. My understanding is that they were just as anti-privacy as Google or Samsung.

They signed on to PRISM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_(surveillance_program) , they happily work with the government over user privacy in articles all the time, and those are just the things we know about. I'm sure there are more PRISM-like back room government deals that we haven't heard of out there, and I haven't seen anything that would make me believe that Apple wouldn't sign on to them.

[m-p-3]

IMO it's just a PR stance to make them stand out from the rest.

[tcfunk]

Is this related to Purism announcing that they had successfully disabled the Intel Management Engine on their laptops? Or is that unrelated? Sorry, this is all new info to me.

[wolfgke]

> Is this related to Purism announcing that they had successfully disabled the Intel Management Engine on their laptops? Or is that unrelated?

It is completely unrelated.

Intel ME is about a remote servicing interface that exists on all current Intel processors. While it has some usages for managing computers in a corporate setting or managing servers (keyword to look for: Intel Active Management Technology (Intel AMT), which needs Intel vPro), it exists on nearly all current Intel processors (except, I think, Intel, Quark; but this processor is built for completely different purposes). Thus there are rumors that it is a backdoor for, say, 3-letter agencies. I don't want to spread any rumors here, but just say: Because Intel ME is very large and complicated (according to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iffTJ1vPCSo 5 MB in size) it is a real concern that lots of security gaps will be found (and some have been found in the past), which, because of Intel ME's structure (according to https://schd.ws/hosted_files/osseu17/84/Replace%20UEFI%20wit... it runs on ring -3) can easily lead to really dangerous security holes. Just for this reason alone any responsible admin should try to disable Intel ME so that this security liability does not have to stay open.

PRISM is a surveillance program by the NSA.